I recently stepped outside to find an aroma from my childhood wafting through the air. It smelled like my grandparents’ house.
It was a cold, dreary day. The snow had melted but it was frigid and there was a slight breeze that carried the aroma of fried beef, something musty and fabric softener. I spent the walk down my hill to the mailbox trying to coax my brain back to her laundry room and remember which fabric softener it was.
And then it hit me.
Snuggle.
I remember because I was a kid and liked the little bear on their commercials.
In my house, there are few brands that actually inspire loyalty. I use the expensive toothpaste that my dentist recommended. There’s a local Mennonite store that sells some pickles that have ruined my opinion of all other pickles forever. Silk almond yogurt is the only kind of yogurt worth buying by my estimation.
But I tend to bounce back and forth between a couple of detergents and buy whatever dryer sheets are on sale. Perhaps this is why my actions were so surprising but I scurried home and ordered a year’s supply of Snuggle dryer sheets.
We have five senses and each one can easily transport us to another time and place. The smell of Elmer’s glue will always remind me of the day I fell asleep on a swing at recess my Kindergarten year. No one even noticed me out there or that I was missing until I wandered back into the classroom.
Those were the eighties for you!
The sight of a Mountain Dew bottle takes me back to my newspaper years when I guzzled the stuff to stay alert on long days. I no longer drink this sugar bomb in a bottle but its presence reminds me of how grateful I am to have survived those days.
And now I have my Snuggle to take me back to my grandma’s laundry room.
Brand loyalty can be a good thing. It’s a small price to pay for a happy memory.
The first woman I ever really loved used liquid blue Snuggle. Her clothes always smelled of it. Neither of us had worked through all the crap of our childhoods yet — and she had some very serious stuff to work through compared to the more garden-variety stuff I had. We didn’t make it because of all that stuff.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the water where you live may not always play well with your favorite products such as soaps and even fabric softeners. When I moved into my previous house, the Downy I’d used for years just wasn’t working as well. I tried a whole bunch of other brands and they didn’t do it either. I finally bought Snuggle to try it. I’d put it off knowing that the scent would bring a lot of memories back. Unfortunately, it worked great in that water. It took me a few months to build new associations with that scent, to replace the ones I really didn’t want to recall.
You are correct about water impacting soap. Lots of products don’t work well with my hard water and, even if products seem to clean ok, the scent is altered or absent. Some soaps don’t even get soapy in my water.
That’s unfortunate about your Snuggle associations but I trust you have formed some happier memories to connect with the scent.
I’m always pleasantly surprised when a scent takes me back to Grandma’s house. I have such vivid memories of her welcoming home. Glad you found a piece of that with Snuggle.🤗
It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it? Comforting.